Tuesday, July 30, 2002
alright, damnit. i'm getting discouraged - maybe it's just new orleans, but this job hunting thing sucks. i am finding nothing. i'd like to think i'm reasonably qualified for a whole lot of things, and finding something good - not optimal, just good - shouldn't be that hard. well, it's been a week of filling out applications and resumes and i don't even have a decent lead. which brings me back to looking at job-hunting sites for other cities (d.c., primarily, and also atlanta and nashville, my two other possibilities) which immediately makes two things clear: • other cities have job-hunting websites. whole websites, devoted to local employment opportunities - imagine that. and when you search for jobs you'd be interested in, you get oodles - oodles, i tell you! not three. oodles! • new orleans is a little too much like its most famous fictional denizen, ignatius reilly. it's the fat, aging, lazy city that still lives at home with mom, can't hold down any jobs, and makes believe its a real city while condescending to others for not having enough "culture." and it's no coincidence that that character fits this city so well. new orleans encourages irregularities in theology & geometry, i think, and accomodates complacency. to really push the metaphors over the edge, new orleans to me is like a big oyster po-boy. it's familiar, comforting, delicious, tempting in so many ways - and yet you can tell how sickeningly unhealthy it is for you by just looking at it. why do people keep doing things they know aren't healthy, when the right thing to do is so clear?
tv guide's top 50 "greatest cartoon characters of all time." one has to wonder what the methodology was behind this, that could put a rugrats character at # 7 and mickey mouse at # 19? Monday, July 29, 2002
yeah, yeah, yeah. i'm awake, i'm awake. actually, i got up around 2pm yesterday and had a very productive day. last night i even went and watched a movie, k-19, with harrison ford and liam neeson playing russians who just happened to speak english with bad russian accents. i couldn't get over that bit. why weren't they speaking russian? (because they don't know how, for one.) i don't know why it annoyed me so much, i just have trouble suspending my disbelief quite that far. besides that, and a few other minor issues with the direction/cinematography, it was a pretty good movie. Sunday, July 28, 2002
and so, with just a few minutes to go, i need to thank my blogathon sponsors for making this really matter, for actually helping me use my weblog to accomplish something really --good-- even if only in a small way. so without further adue: thank you simeon, and happy birthday, again. thank you anne... we'll get your blog started soon. thank you f.g. fox... and thanks for writing that book. thank you denise... and thanks for the good conversation and the company in those darkest hours... regretably, i did not post as much as i should have, and in fact missed several hours altogether - four or five, i think, depending on how you're counting. of course, i won't ask anyone to contribute more than i actually earned, so just deduct those hours from my total. or feel free to give the original amount just based on the fact that i did make it through till morning... thanks again, so much... and thanks to everybody who visited over the past day. it's been great. and now, if you don't mind, i am going to sleep. for a week.
minutes, only minutes left. not minuets. minutes. this is silly. no, honestly, i wish i had been more active tonight and yesterday, and taken more time to meet and chat with other people doing the blogathon. this is clearly the kind of experience that you get what you put into it, and looking back from here, near the end, i don't feel as if i've put in as much of a concerted effort as i might have, or prepared as well as i could have, and consequently it's been a bit lighter of an experience for that fact. which i regret. still, it has been pretty fun.
did you know i've done this whole silly night without benefit of caffeine? no coffee, no tea, no diet coke. it's been pretty much just water. i just realized this myself not too long ago. yikes! my radio timer just came on - i wake up to n.p.r. every morning - and scared the hell out of me. i'm not usually awake for that. but i am glad to hear that all nine miners got out of that collapsed mine in pennsylvania alive. what the ???? it's suddenly overcast and raining, hard. i swear it was blue skies and sun 25 minutes ago.
jeez. i'm loopy. and who turned the sun on? not even slowly... i turn around, look out the window, and it's full on day out there. arghhhh...the light! the light!
didn't really realize this would be the case, but as it gets later, er, earlier, say - though i'm having no trouble staying awake, i'm totally at a loss for coherence, and my motor skills (read: typing ability) have gone all to hell. which goes to show that although i can still pull an all-nighter, it's been so long since i've had to be productive through one that i'm kind of losing it. ah, for the wayward days o' my youth! ah, for the rhodes college publications center, and staying up till dawn chasing newspaper deadlines and coding html for colossus by hand! long nights of marathon on the pub center network! hearing the birds chirping outside the window as the sun came up over memphis! halliburton tower at dawn! are you with me here?? those were the days... *sigh*
this post is a tribute to one of my favorite weblogs, one of the senior class, so to speak - nubbin.com, which has, after four years, recently ceased to be... (it's expired and gone on to meet its maker! stiff! bereft of life, it rests in peace! off the twig! kicked the bucket! shuffled off it's mortal coil! this is an ex-weblog!!!) ariana, your wit & wisdom will be missed. hope to see you around town.
i'm here, i'm posting. but gimme a minute, i'm having an aim conversation with denise. who's not only been nice enough to keep me company at this insane hour, but even went so far as to sponsor me! too kind. and great to talk to...
so tonight (during the lost hours there, when i went for a drink at mythique with simeon for his birthday) i happened to run into a couple of pretty cool people - eve and joel - who i only knew of online, from my nolablogs.com site. as a matter of fact, just last week, even and joel started a new free tagboard system called q-board, which is really convenient and easy to use and easy to install, and so of course put one on nolablogs. anyway, point being, if you've got a page that has or needs a tagboard for anything, you really should check this q-board thing out. and it has no ads, never will. and it's free. so go get one.
you know what's aggravating? when you spend so much time on a single post that by the time you're done, you're due to write another. and another. now, see, the only silly thing about my complaining about this now is that i'm betting everybody else who's blogathon-ing tonight found that out around 10am yesterday. ack. again, mea culpa, but what can you do? *yawn* uh-oh. it's too early for that.
from a quick glance over at velvet rut, one might be inclined to think that crystal had recently discovered the joys of the digital camera. the shotgun, i can't explain. you may remember (or you may not) a while back when i mentioned that i had gotten a lomo action sampler camera - a little low-tech gadget that takes some pretty cool little pictures. i've only shot a few rolls, but, here are a few of my favorites so far.
so i've been watching a lot of cartoon network lately, for some reason. in this last month, being single again, i've reverted to at least one of my bachelor ways - not sleeping in bed. i usually tend to want some sort of distraction to fall asleep, unless i'm just painfully tired - and so i've been falling asleep on the sofa, watching tv. this is also pretty much the only time i ever watch tv. i hate waking up to infomercials, so the non-paid advertisment channel selection is pretty slim. i usually end up on the cartoon network - it's comforting. of course the powerpuff girls rock, and johnny bravo, and i really like some of the anime they sho on adult swim, especially cowboy bebop - but i've come to really love boomerang, when they show all the old cartoons from the 70s and 80s. it's comforting to go to sleep to an episode of the superfriends, or of johnny quest, or classic scooby doo. comforting, while at the same time kind of odd and disconcerting, like old friends who don't seem to have changed at all since you saw them 20 years ago...
ever eat shark? i bought a thing of blacktip shark the other day at the grocery because it was cheap, and vaguely proteinacious. i'm trying to eat a diet based on the theory that protein = good; water = good; unrefined starches = ok. i've cut back severely, if not completely, on the diet cokes, which those who know me well may not believe, but it's true... anyway, shark. it's a strange fish to cook & eat - there's not much lean meat to it, but what there is seems to cook very well, to kind of a pork chop consistency. the rest you've just got to throw away. anyway, i just got it as an experiment, not something i'll try again soon, but it wasn't too bad. adventures in weird cooking. interesting word of the moment: elasmobranch. refers to any cartilaginous fish of the class chondrichthyes (like sharks, for example.) elasmobranch,elasmobranch,elasmobranch!
why is it that the one day that i really, really need my cell phone aim connection to work, it wants no part of it? back now, and up for the remaining duration. this has been a less than exemplary blog-a-thon for me, though i have had a few good posts in here. and there's six hours to go yet. lots of scanning to do for a freelance project, and lots of time to do it. so. to work, and to blogging more. every half an hour from here on. and reviews. bunches. Saturday, July 27, 2002
not one to desert a good friend on his birthday - especially not a good friend who's sponsoring this blogathon - i'm going to try the remote blogging thing again for a while, and go get a drink with simeon. i'll be back, and hopefully be able to post from my cell phone this time, if it all works out right. that's the theory.
all this talking about new orleans - which, of course, i'm wont to do, it's easy to write about things you love and know intimately, you know? - reminds me of a site that more people should see. it's kind of about the more burlesque/grotesque bits of the city's culture, which, really when you think of it, are all the best, most interesting things - so check it out. it's called eccentric new orleans. which, come to think of it, has nearly the same name as the only guidebook to this city that i've ever liked, even for locals - it's called "bizarre new orleans" and it's by F.G. Fox, an author of some note - whom i'm proud to say is also one of my sponsors for this very blogathon, and whom i need to thank very much for that.. anyway, i keep my copy of it in my car, so if i'm ever in a wandering mood, i can go track down some esoteric landmark, or a home where one of my favorite authors once lived. i wrote a review of it for amazon.com that i think sums up my thoughts on it pretty well: i'm one of those native new orleanians who is very passionate about this city, and i know it like the back of my hand. our city's history and cultural heritage in music and literature is especially rich, and you won't find a more eccentric, strange and beautiful city in all the world. i'm sure lots of books can give tourists generalized history lessons and nice color coded maps of the city - this one won't. but this is the one book i found indispensable in my own detailed, off the beaten path explorations of my own city. all the guidebooks will tell you where tennessee williams lived in the french quarter - but only this one gave me the address of walker percy's old haunt in my very own neighborhood, or directions to the exact plot in the cemetary where gram parsons (of byrds & flying burrito brothers fame) is buried, and the quirky story that goes with that tidbit of information. though maybe not ideal for the casual tourist, this book is for anyone who really wants to get to know new orleans on a much deeper level.
flipping channels just now, i found a bond movie i hadn't seen before... and in this day and age of austen powers inanity, a good, realistic, true-to life, unexaggerated james bond movie is a refreshing thing. yeah. well, this was a roger moore film, and i knew within a few seconds of hearing the score that it must be " live and let die"... what i didn't know, never having seen it, was that this film features 007 in new orleans, circa 1973 ... with a conveniently timed jazz funeral marching through the french quarter, of course, because that's something that happens every day. right. one nice thing, though, was that it clearly featured some bona fide new orleans actors, judging by the accents, which most movies never get right. new orleanians do not sound like cajuns - you've got to go at least half an hour west to hear anything even close to a cajun french accent. the worst offender in the new orleans accent department was probably "the big easy" while one of the best movies about the city - though it has it's flaws - was the jim jarmush directed, tom waits/john lurie/roberto benigni starring "down by law." all this reminds me of the fact that my father was apparently an extra in one of the most notoriously terrible blaxploitation films of the seventies, also filmed in new orleans, called "mandingo." he apparently helps carry some injured guy down some stairs or something, or whatever. i've never seen it myself, but i've heard the story several times. and in searching for all these titles on the imdb just now, i came across another fun looking new orleans movie - jd's revenge. "A docile black law student is possessed by a 1940's mobster in mid-70's New Orleans. The mobster seeks revenge upon the people who killed him and his sister." does this sound cool, or what? it seems like most movies filmed here have to capitalize on the voodoo mythology thing, as if we're a suburb of jamaica (not saying we're not, but still.) nola's also been host to some real pulp fiction, like these ... but it's had a few decent ones, too, of course. off the top of my head, then: "angel heart", "candyman 3", "interview with a vampire", and "dracula 2000" - that last about eight seconds of which were filmed right outside my apartment, on st. charles. they put up fake gas lights along the street and turned off all the real streetlamps. you know, just to make it look more realistic.
hmm... ok. on the topic of new orleans, it's occasionally been pointed out to me that this city is home to some pretty unique grammar, completely aside from our hideous misproununciations. one thing that you see a lot here that's a bit weird are over and mis-used quotation marks. "shrimp" are $1.99 a pound; that house is for "rent"; the garage sale is "saturday"; and that restaurant sells "hot" po-boys. these quotation marks are, in point of fact used for "emphasis" - where anyone else might use bolding or underlining. though they always appear to me to imply something of the subjunctive, something uncertain - what's the catch? are they really shrimp? is it really for rent? if i show up on saturday, will there be a garage sale, and will the po-boys be merely lukewarm? thinking of new orleans signs, there are a few that are great just for their content, slogans that you just know from living here. a few examples: • "there are no shortcuts to quality" - you read this motto as you wait for an hour in line, in the sweltering heat of a new orleans summer day, for a snowball at hansens on tchoupitoulas. • "artists performing tonight only" - seen on the musician's side entrance to tipitina's, probably the most famous music club in new orleans... the implication being that if they let all the musicians in the side door, there wouldn't be anyone left to pay the cover... • "street car signal only" - on st.charles and calliope (that's pronounced cal-ee-owp, unlike the muse or the instrument of the same name), the streetcars have their own traffic signals. they look just like a regular traffic light, red, yellow, green - only about half the size. kinda cute.
ahhh... it didn't work, i guess. i thought it might have been. grrr. well, i'm back and still blogging. so, i've missed a couple of hours here & there... i'm a bad person. i know.
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. i'm not very good at this consistent posting thing, i'm sorry. but i'm still at it - and finally, i've got my first five album reviews up on my music page. i'm going to try to take the blogathon mobile now - writing from my cell phone. don't know how that will work out, but we'll see. it should work.
see! sim and i just went to get a snowball, and hansen's was closed today only - so we went to tee-eva's snowballs, on magazine street. it's a different snowball experience, and not necessarily better, than hansen's. i got a creole cream cheese flavor. it was... strange. and the ice isn't shaved as finely. so it's not hansen's, but i knew that. and of course, it wasn't served by ashley hansen, so you know, it's just not the same. eh.
yes. this posting every half an hour thing is not for me. doing some laundry now, oh-most-hated-task of them all; i suppose i'll move on to dishes and such soon enough. simeon is over and we're still working on his site a bit. not much else going on; haven't gotten a snoball yet, just took a shower... ok. short post, so i can keep doing all those things and have more to post about later. or something. arg.
hmmm. working on sim's website. and stuff. i think it's time to go get a snowball... odd new orleans weather outside, bright and sunny except for one corner of the sky that's kind of dark and foreboding, and thundering, threatening to take over the sky and rain and rain and rain and then stop and then the streets will be hazy with the rising steam of it... that's when you really realize the truly tropical nature of life in new orleans... there's also an aroma which takes the city over some nights, fetid and strong and spicy and organic - human, like sweat or sex... there's a bite to it, a sharpness - it suffuses the whole city, uptown, downtown, the french quarter - and there's really no explanation for it, though one gets the feeling it rolls in off the river like the fog, or comes up out of the earth, like the soil fermenting, the whole city a primordial slurry of alcoholic moisture...
ooh! found a funny flash movie just now - you may have to be a graphic design/typography geek to really appreciate it, but it's pretty funny (and educational!) anyway: behind the typeface: cooper black.
currently listening to : the rent soundtrack. things to do: watch either dvd - barcelona, or amelie. go get a hansen's snowball. stretch a canvas to paint. work on my portfolio. work on redesigning simeon's blog, and designing one for his girlfriend anne. um. yeah. that should do for a while. and write the backlog of music reviews i've got now. that's 5 i owe you so far, almost 6. alright, here goes.
ick. i'm no good at this every-half an hour thing. which is really no good, to be this tired at the beginning, when you're supposed to be tired at the end. the game is staying up all night, right? not all day. hehehe. ah, well. but my sleep patterns have always been rather odd and reversed - so we'll see. i may be a bit erratic, but i'll make it for the duration from here on. so. what else? i've had horrible problems with the united parcel service this week - really these past two weeks - because three people have sent me birthday presents from amazon, which uses u.p.s. to deliver packages, right? well, the first one actually came on time, with no hassle. the second and third packages came while i wasn't home, and then when i signed the little slip for them to be left at my door, the u.p.s. driver wrote a note back that he couldn't leave them outside. which was strange and i still don't understand why not. anyway, i went to the u.p.s. headquarters to get them, and only one of them was there. the other had apparently been re-addressed and misdelivered to some skyscraper address downtown. very odd. so then they had to send a u.p.s. driver to get that package back, and bring it to me the next day. i thought it was a goner, there was no way in hell they'd pull off the recovery, and i'd never find out who it was from or what it was. well, at 5pm yesterday, i get the knock on my door, and there it is. so. practical upshot is that i need to thank my friend jered bocage a whole hell of a lot for the dvd and the book he sent me; and thank jen for the two dvds; and thank listen missy for the cd. (yep. 2 copies of barcelona . but that's ok. i'll return one and get something else.)
yay! lunch is coming. falafel is good. you know what's really bad and annoying, though? when windows me keeps telling you to click here to install some update that you really have no reason or desire to install. but it won't go away until you do. hmmm. looks like a beautiful day outside, i wonder if the mid-day showers will be coming through later, the way they usually do, or if they're taking the weekend off. also annoying is the fact that for some stupid reason, blogger keeps asking me for my password every time i try to post. i guess that comes of leaving this window open continuously - the page times out and all.
ok. i'm beginning to wake up a bit. things may make a little more sense from here on out. as you can probably tell, it was a long friday night - certainly unadvisable seeing as i had to get up to do this, but then it's simeon's birthday and you really can't deny someone to go have a few drinks on their birthday. ok, well i can't. pleasant enough time, but it just kept getting later and later... anyway. so now that i'm a bit more conscious, the hourly music reviews will be coming shortly.
hmm. maybe a bit too long between posts there. but i'm still here.
hehe. simeon just called to make sure i was up and posting already. which i am, hardly though... i'll be napping for a while. i don't know if that's against the rules, but that's the way it's got to be... too... tired... the first of my music reviews will be appearing with the next update, y'all. till then.
LET THE WILD BLOGATHON START! ugh. up 'till 5 am, awake again at 8 to blog for a 24 hour awake. ouch. that's all i've got the physical & mental wherewithal to post for the momentico, folks. but i'm here, which i guess is something. Thursday, July 25, 2002
so. what a difference a day makes. tuesday, in particular, was a big day this week. i'm back at it, nearly a year later - going the freelance design route, and looking for a full time design job - in town to start, but elsewhere as well... things are starting out pretty decently - work is coming out of the woodwork, so to speak, as often seems to happen when you need it most - but this time things are happening quickly. this time it's going to work, damnit. wish me luck, and if you know of any design that needs doing, let me know. Tuesday, July 23, 2002
i just got a new photo up at the mirror project. Monday, July 22, 2002
damn. you know you're a computer geek when you spend half an hour laughing uncontrollably at the chat quotes on this page. no other brand of human would find stuff like this funny: ::BombScare:: i beat the internet  another nice weekend, come and gone far too quickly. though i wanted to go to shreveport to visit rod and jennifer (for her birthday - happy birthday, jen!), circumstances conspired against and i had to stick around town - which turned out to be not all that bad. last night i went out with simeon and his girlfriend anne to mythique, which was having a chartreuse party. $2.50 chartreuse, which is, in terms of value, the equivalent of, say, free guinness. i thought i'd written here before about chartreuse and what a wonderful thing it is - though i can't find it now - but suffice it to say that i love the stuff, and that there's no place better to drink it and be drunk with it than in the french quarter. if you don't know it (though you should) it's a hard flavor to describe - it's a mixture of 141 herbs, probably the most complex flavor i know... the only way i can describe it is that a sip of chartreuse sums up new orleans at night - the thick air, the heat, the sweat, the river, the purple-orange darkness, the sex and the decay and the beauty... i can't explain it. but it does. i've had chartreuse in paris, and in grenoble, near the monastery where it's made - but i still think it fits this city best. i had a good time at the party, too; simeon, anne and i made our first attempt at playing the thousand blank white cards game, which was amusing enough; i ran into a surprising number of old friends, was introduced to several friends of sim's (including two other blog-having-people). and of course i consumed lots of beautiful green chartreuse, and even tried some absinthe, which, if it was the real stuff, was much milder than i expected, with a nice milky anise flavor. very subtle with not nearly the licorice kick of pernod or aguardiente... anyway. the result was a nice, pleasant, lucid-dreamy drunkenness, a short but fun wild rumpus on the dancefloor, and a nice safe cab ride home. and no hangover ;)oh, and, um, you can still sponsor me (and thereby also the new orleans musician's clinic) for the 24 hour blogathon next weekend! Thursday, July 18, 2002
 the first meeting of the nolabloggers went really well. we had about eleven people show up at cc's ( two of whom are without active blogs) and one more showed up later. good company, good conversation, and a lot of fun. it was a pleasure to meet everybody. i hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as i did - and i hope i was okay as the ad hoc host... in retrospect i feel as if i might have been a bit anxious to keep the conversation going. read: i was talking a lot, which is a bit unusual for me. hmmm. anyway, everyone seems interested in meeting again next month some time, and later in the evening, some of us hatched a plot to have the entire blog world converge on new orleans for mardi gras 2003. more on that as it develops. and i'm not the only one who thinks that next time we should try to play the thousand blank white cards game. might be interesting, especially if we meet at a bar... also mentioned, among other things, were several absent local heroes, sites like fark.com, metafilter, and anexquisitecorpse.net, how many more new orleans bloggers there must be on diaryland and livejournal, and how the music industry and the RIAA are evil. it was a good time. hopefully next month we'll get even more people to come out. pictures are on the photo page. and in less significant but still quite happy news: • the webcam is updated and working! • i upgraded to photoshop 7! • i still need sponsors for the 24 hour blogathon, if anyone's interested. Wednesday, July 17, 2002
a couple of community type things going on right now that are kind of interesting. first, the new orleans bloggers are having their first get-together in conjunction with national blog meetup day. we're meeting at cc's coffeeshop on magazine & jefferson, 7pm on thursday (tomorrow). we'll see how that goes - should be interesting...  the other thing is that i've signed up for the 24-hour blogathon.the way this works is that a blogger (me, in this case) has to try and blog once every half hour for 24 hours on July 27-28, and people sponsor them for a certain amount per hour, or for flat amount if they make it all 24 hours. the sponsors send the money directly to the blogger's designated charity, so you're sure the money goes where it's supposed to. my charity is the new orleans musician's clinic, which is a free clinic operated by the lsu school of medicine and which serves new orleans' professional musicians, most of whom have no health insurance, and don't make enough to get adequate medical care. these are the people who make new orleans the vibrant, creative community it is. these are people who over the years have created some of the best jazz, blues and r&b music in the world. i think it's a good cause. to raise any money, i need sponsors - at least 3 by the 20th. even if it's just a few cents an hour, or a couple of dollars, i'd really appreciate any support i can get. i think it's a really worthwile event... so even if you're not into new orleans musicians, go to the blogathon site and find a blogger whose charity you like, and sponsor away! otherwise, click here to sponsor me. i'd really appreciate it. Tuesday, July 16, 2002
so it did turn out to be a good day. i ended up having dinner with simeon at adolfo's on frenchmen street, which is one of my favorite italian restaurants, and then heading across the street to d.b.a. for a couple of drinks. strangely, and unintentionally, those are the very same places i went last year on my birthday - a near perfect "repetition" a la walker percy's "the moviegoer" - an experience which repeats and evokes a past experience and allows you to isolate, in your mind, the time between those twin occurrences as a complete cycle, a finished whole: the better to parse and come to terms with it. hmm. interesting, especially as i'm feeling more like binx than ever these days. quite a nice birthday, overall. though it would have seemed more birthday-like if there had been a cake of some sort involved. oh, well. oh, and this scares the living hell out of me. citizen spies. watch what you say - the pizza delivery guy might hear. or the cable technician. and if they don't like you, you might just be a terrorist. yikes. Monday, July 15, 2002
good morning! you're 27 years old today. no, wait, that's me. geesh. i don't think i'm in my mid-twenties anymore, toto. this may be the first birthday i've been less than thrilled to encounter. not that birthday-related activities haven't been great so far. before she left town for the rest of the summer last week, amy took me to marisol, and although the restaurant didn't live up to our expectations, it was a pleasant time and a nice farewell. on friday night, i went out with simeon for drinks at mythique, had a blast, and ran into two other new orleans bloggers - the ubiquitous james, and molly, who's very nice and happens to be a damn fine bartender, too. last night my family took me to indigo, a spectacular restaurant despite being hidden away in a slightly sketchy neighborhood. everything was great except that the waitress brought me the wrong entree, and by the time they brought me the right one, everyone else had finished theirs. kinda sad, but kinda funny, it being my birthday dinner and all. anyway. we'll see how the rest of the day goes, but wwoz is playing the olympia brass band's version of "little liza jane" right now, a song which never fails to make me smile. that's a good start, at least. Friday, July 12, 2002
today is my day of waiting in lines. this morning i waited in line for three hours at the state revenue & taxation office so they could tell me that the little e-commerce corporation i started last year (don't ask) didn't owe anything, because it hadn't earned anything, in fact it hadn't even started business. which was what i had been trying to tell them over the phone for months. and now i'm about to have to go stand in another interminable line to have my driver's license renewed, because it expires monday. this makes me sad, because it means i'm going to have to give up my current driver's license, which after four years i've become quite attached to. i don't know if that makes sense to anybody else - probably not - but you get used to the image of yourself on that card - you see it in your wallet all the time, you develop an identification with it - that's me! that's what i look like! ... even as you age and change and look less like it, that photo remains familiar ... anyway... i'm weird. i know. it was a pretty good picture as driver's licenses go, too. update: they let me keep the old license... all they did was punch a hole in it. the new photo came out alright, but not as good as the last one - which i'm attributing to the improvement in digital camera technology in the last four years. Tuesday, July 09, 2002
 yesterday was kind of a big day, in a quiet, low-key way, because my grandfather, pablo, quietly re-appeared. he just walked into the law office in the morning, said hello to the secretaries and tossed me a couple of fuzzy, peach-like fruit he had grabbed off a tree in his back yard on the way out. i'm still not sure what they were, but they were pretty good regardless. you see, pablo had left about five weeks ago, saying something vague and in spanish about visiting a friend in honduras or guatemala, and that he'd be back later. but he left us no itinerary, no contact information, nothing. this was largely because he had not even the slightest idea about that sort of stuff himself - he was just going, and he'd be back. he does this once every couple of years, goes off on a journey all by himself with no word as to when he'll return, to some distant land of dubious political stability to visit friends he hasn't seen or heard from in twenty or forty years. honduras, guatemala, costa rica, portugal, panama, france... probably other places he's forgotten to mention. remember uncle traveling matt on "fraggle rock"? kind of like that, except he's mildly senile, he doesn't send postcards, and he isn't a muppet. at first i worried about him on these haphazard trips, but not anymore. he can obviously still hack it, and if he doesn't come back one day, it'll more likely be because he's happier kicking back on the porch of some coffee plantation eating platanos y arroz con pollo than he would be sitting at the spare computer in my dad's dreary suburban law office day after day, playing windows 95 solitaire and reading dimestore paperback fiction. i know i would be. that being said, i'm glad he's back.
i had a buggy weekend. like creepy crawly bugs - i guess that comes with the summer weather and all, but still. on saturday, my former girlfriend (with whom, i'm glad to report, the 'friends' thing is going quite well. mostly.) locked herself out of her apartment and needed help breaking in, so i obliged and climbed up to the balcony outside her second story window, unscrewed the burglar bars, and crawled in through the blinds. whereupon i was immediately stung on my right calf by an irate wasp who was none too thrilled about my using his window. that was bug one. sunday, i went out to borders in metairie to see if there was anything interesting. i picked out a few books and magazines to flip through, and found a nice spot on the floor in the art books section on the second floor where i could sit legs-crossed and read for a bit without getting in anyone's way. a nice spot, that is, until i noticed the ant crawling up my ankle. and then another one. and another. somehow, on the carpeted second floor of a clean, national chain bookstore, i managed to sit in an ant pile. this was no fun. after smooshing the last of about twenty of the little buggers, the damage had been done. i had the creepy-crawlies - er, ants in my pants, figuratively, now - for the remainder of the day. every breeze, every twitch, every little touch of hair to skin felt like bugs. i did up getting a sale-priced book on edward hopper at borders, though, and i found the art book i want mostest of all for my quickly approaching birthday. how old i'm about to become scares me. more than wasps. which reminds me, i need to get my driver's license renewed asap. ick. Saturday, July 06, 2002
here's an odd (and pretty amazing) thing to have happen: the white stripes have posted a concert review by yours truly, originally posted right here on this blog, on the official www.whitestripes.com! considering how they've gotten, well, pretty big lately - ok, they're fucking huge - that's quite an honor, i think. i wish they'd left in all the apostrophes, though.
yikes. it's been a few days. things are good, though. i had a great 4th of july, complete with an impromptu cookout by the pool at my condo complex with pretty much all of my friends who are still in town (including amy, even.) i made new orleans style barbequed shrimp (which, for those of you not from new orleans, has nothing at all to do with actual barbeque - neither the grill nor the sauce. just lots of butter and garlic) and fried catfish nuggets and grilled vegetables and veggie burgers. and a red, white and blue angelfood/strawberry/whipped cream parfait. (i dyed the angelfood cake blue) and holly and diane made an american flag out of jello shots, strawberries, blueberries and whipped cream. woo-hoo! and after a nice afternoon of swimming, we all ended up on my couch watching most of toy story 2. a much better holiday than the lonely one i had expected. i watched the mothman prophecies last night, and it scared the bejezzus out of me. in a that's-based-on-a-true-story-gets-you-thinking sort of way. lots of little chills up your spine and all. and i'm convinced they cast richard gere in the lead because he looks like david duchovny, and it's really just a big x-file. Tuesday, July 02, 2002
current events are conspiring to not cheer me up today - a mid-air crash over germany kills 71 people, mostly kids, and an errant us. bomb kills upwards of 40 afghans attending a wedding. i don't think today could possibly be more depressing. i did meet my sister for lunch and coffee, though, and i'm feeling a bit better than i was last night.
amy just came over and took all of her stuff home. i suddenly feel very alone. breaking up was the rational, sane thing to do for us; it was for the best. it had gotten to a point where we were only still together for the convenience of it, for the familiarity and comfort of Having Someone There, and we both knew it. things weren't going to get better. we talked about it, we agreed on it. it was mutual. we're still friends. so why am i hurting so much tonight? because fresh wounds still hurt, even if they're self-inflicted. because it's a change - a change of the big, life-altering kind - and change is something i've never dealt with well. the thought that my life will never be the same as it was, and wasn't it wonderful? (not always) and because i'm sentimental - i'm haunted in the past by memories, and in the future by all the what-could-have-beens, and at times like this, all i remember are the good times, and the most ambitious dreams. and because i'm once again faced with The Great Unknown, as in, what now? god, i hate break-ups. even good ones. this too shall pass, of course. tonight's a bad night, bound to be hard. tomorrow, i'll start thinking of the upside to all this. promise. *sigh* Monday, July 01, 2002
it's been a three diet coke morning. not good. and it's pouring outside. pouring. and i don't have a window to look out at the rain.
is cnn getting their "news" from the onion these days? you'd think they would stick with the suicide bombers and missing children and corporate accounting scandals. but then, possessed, bullhorn-toting redneck preachers always make for a good human interest piece, don't they? very southern-gothic. someone should write a short story.
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